


B-Roll

by politehamster



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, emetophobia warning, this is so dumb sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-09-27
Packaged: 2017-12-27 18:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/politehamster/pseuds/politehamster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(this whole mess is stupid, she just wants to go home, click her dirty ballet flats together three times and fly over the rainbow) </p><p>post-entry 76 AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	B-Roll

**Author's Note:**

> I hope I didn’t write Hoody as being OOC. I actively tried to make him not speak since I’ve never really heard him talk at length. I also used he/him/his pronouns. (It’s hard to write MH fanfic especially if Hoody is a character because I find him so ambiguous when it comes to his motivations). Anyway. Yeah.
> 
> This is dedicated to Brittney cause she's very good at humoring me.

She runs until the scenery around her melts together into a surrealist painting. She runs until she gets cramps in her side, her chest, her thighs. She runs until she’s almost laughing, almost crying. This whole thing is ridiculous. Alex Kralie, Amy’s mild-mannered, floppy haired, boyfriend pointing a gun in her face. Every time she blinks she’s sees it, the barrel glinting in the glow of a flashlight. Jessica’s never seen a real gun before. Alex was holding a gun. _She_ was holding a gun. It was sweaty and warm in her hand. Oh god, oh fuck. She’s going to throw up.

The darkness overwhelms her. She breaths it in, chokes on it. Coughs and bites back tears and bile. Everything is spinning way too fast and she wants to get off this fucking ride before she completely loses it. Jessica trips, her ankle catching on a stray tree root, and she tastes a mixture of dirt and blood in her mouth. The camera slips out of her grasp and lands a few feet away from her. A camera? Oh yeah, I was holding that. Why was I holding that?

For some reason, she picks it up and keeps going, limping slightly. With every step she winces at the new pain in her ankle. She _has_ to keep going. Someone in the back of her mind keeps telling her Alex isn’t too far behind. She sees him around every tree. His words repeat, skip, scratch like an old record.

_“It’s all Jay’s fault, Jessica. I’m sorry. It has to be done.”_

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It has to be done. Gun. Tunnel. Footsteps. Gun. Trees. Fucking trees. Where is the exit?

Jessica stops abruptly, peering at something through the underbrush. It’s a person. Not Alex. It’s not Alex, you idiot. He’s…

She calls out to the person, but they don’t respond. This person in a trim black business suit and tie. This person she remembers seeing in a dream once—or maybe it’s a memory from a long time ago? She’s a little kid, dressed in a fleece jacket and pink rain boots. No umbrella. It doesn’t matter.

“Help!” Jessica shouts, running toward this person now, ignoring her aching muscles. “I need help! _Please_.”

Whoever they were, they’re gone now. She’s alone. But maybe it’s better this way.

Jessica turns, hoping this time she’ll be heading in the right direction, when she sees that person in the nice, black business suit.

Standing so close she can see they don’t have a face.

* * *

 

Waking up in odd places seems to be a running theme in her life lately.

This time, instead of a seemingly empty hotel, or the middle of the woods, she awakens on a cheap, half-deflated mattress. When she tries to sit up her vision blurs, spins, rocks back and forth like some cross between vertigo and rhythmic gymnastics. Yeah, she’s _definitely_ about to throw up.

Jessica stands on shaky legs, feeling her way to a door, a window, something. The morning air smells clean, and it sort of helps the massive headache she’s currently nursing, but it doesn’t stop the backflips in her stomach. She feels soft, wet dirt on her palms as she heaves into a nearby shrub. The world is still swirling, whirling, topsy-turvy fuckshitfuck.

Her eyelids are almost too heavy to keep open. Jessica is so close to curling up on the forest floor using a pile of leaves as a pillow. All she wants to do is sleep. But someone is grabbing her wrist, leading her back to the mattress. Their grip is solid, but gentle enough for it not to feel life-threatening. It triggers a memory, a scene played out in slow motion.

The woods. A gloved hand covering her mouth ( _shhhh!_ ). The glare of a flashlight. Let her go. Gunshots. Ugh, so loud. Go away. Five more minutes, Amy, I swear.

Jessica slips in and out of sleep. Once there’s a bottle of water next to her when she wakes up. She knows it’s a big fat NO to take a drink of something a stranger gives you, but her throat is so dry, she’s coughing up dust bunnies and tumbleweeds. Taking a tentative sip, she’s reminded of those stories you hear about people lost in the desert. They’re so out of it they start hallucinating, cupping sand into their mouths instead of water. She dreams about camels and prickly cacti and a boy wearing a faded green hat.

The next time she wakes up she’s vaguely aware that someone is in the room with her, watching her. For a moment she panics. It’s like she’s drowning in an inch of water, kicking her legs, gasping for breath. She tries to scream. A squeak escapes her lips. _Meow!_

This person watching her is the not the man in the business suit. (A man? Could she even call _it_ a man?) It’s that guy… the guy in the hooded sweatshirt and mask. The one who was there with her in the woods. The one who probably brought her there in the first place. The one who came out of nowhere.

He puts a finger to the mask’s red mouth, telling her to be quiet. Calm the fuck down. She does, but it’s still hard to breath. She wheezes into a balled fist.

“What’s going on?” She’s sick. Sick of not knowing anything. Sick of being kept in the dark. Sick of being sick.

The hooded man does not respond. His silence irritates and scares her at the same time. However, the hooded man is careful in his movements, treating her like a skittish animal, a bomb that’s only a few seconds from exploding, burning down this tiny shack and everyone in it. He reaches slowly into his pockets and pulls out an orange prescription bottle.

Jessica eyes him skeptically, waiting to see what he does next. The whole thing is kind of funny, in a weird way that wouldn’t be funny to anyone else but her. Like one of those stupid knock-knock jokes that Amy always found so hilarious. _Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?_

He twists open the bottle top and shakes out a pill into his hand. He holds it out for her to take. Jessica shakes her head.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Jessica asks. Her voice shakes, betraying her. “I’m not taking that.”

He doesn’t move, even when she bats his hand away, even when she glares and calls him every obscenity she knows. Finally, he snatches her wrist, pressing the pill into her sweaty palm. The way he touches her is so urgent, almost desperate in a way, and it’s a stupid reason (this whole mess is stupid, she just wants to go home, click her dirty ballet flats together three times and fly over the rainbow) to do it, but she does it. She swallows the pill, chasing it down with a gulp of water.

The hooded man sinks back on the heels of his sneakers. Jessica musters up a little more courage and says, “Why did Alex… why did he try and shoot me? Do you know? Why am I even here. With you, I mean. Alex said you want to hurt me. He says you want to hurt him.”

The hooded man doesn’t answer any of her questions. He’s lost interest in her, instead busying himself with a video camera, pushing buttons and adjusting the lens. Oh god I’m in a snuff film, aren’t I? This is one big snuff film, and I’m about to get hacked up into little pieces.

Jessica gets up, ready to run. She took down Alex and he was pointing a gun at her. You can handle this, Jessica. You can do this. But instead of dashing out of the shack like she imagined, Jessica stumbles and falls on the musty wooden floor. Her ankle. Oh.

The hooded man abandons his camera to help her up. He brings her back to the mattress and makes a sit/stay motion with his hands like she’s a mangy old dog he happened to pick up on the side of the road.

“I’m not getting anything out of you,” Jessica says, frowning. She can feel another headache coming on; though this one seems to be caused by frustration rather than whatever illness she’s contracted.

The hooded man continues to ignore her. Well, she’s not going anywhere with this bum ankle. At least hoody over there isn’t acting like he wants to cast her as the main starlet in his splatter film. It’s strange how calm she’s starting to feel. Everything is normal again, except… it’s not normal. She doesn’t know where her house is. She doesn’t know where her best friend is.

What she _does_ know it she’s not stumbling around aimlessly in the woods. No guns, or Alex’s, or faceless men in black suits. It’s just her and some weirdo in a mask. And for some reason it’s ok. Everything is normal.

Everything is fine.

* * *

 

At some point Jessica had fallen asleep again. She blinks, her vision adjusting to the dark. The hooded man is nowhere to be found. Jessica scours the shack, looking for any trace of him, hoping he wasn’t some hallucination—some magical oasis in the desert that had never truly existed. The pill bottle is gone. The camera is gone. He is gone.

Jessica puts some weight on her injured ankle, testing to see if she can walk on it without any trouble. It still stings, but it’s only a small cry of protest. Nothing she can’t handle. She’s about to leave the shack for good when the hooded man appears, rushing toward her with that camera in his hand. Why is everyone she meets determined to record every little thing?

“What--?” Jessica starts, but the hooded man doesn’t have time for small talk. He tugs on her forearm, pulling her along on his mad dash out of the shack.

He pulls her through the woods, and she’s too scared to even think about getting away. The dark clumps of trees look like monsters, like memories she’d kill to bury in the murkiest places of her mind. Jessica’s getting better at reading this hooded man. Something is wrong. And they _have_ to get away from whatever it is.

So she runs. She runs until she gets cramps, until her ankle numbs and she can’t feel it anymore. She runs until she hears someone laughing and crying, hysterical, and knows that it’s probably her. She runs and runs, not letting go of the hand holding onto hers.

 


End file.
